“Xiao Yu! Run!”
The sound of a sharp blade tearing through flesh rang out once more, icy and clear.
Scalding liquid with a rusty, metallic stench splashed across Chi Yujun’s face, staining his vision red as the warm sensation slid down his cheek.
This liquid was familiar to him.
It was something found in both food and supplements.
Yet he had never imagined it would also flow through his own father’s body.
A middle-aged man wreathed in faint black qi stood in front of Chi Yujun.
His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud.
Beneath his wide, ashen-white crossed collar, blood gushed endlessly from his chest, impossible to stem.
A silver-white sword had mercilessly pierced through his body, reducing that once powerful frame to nothing but ragged, violent gasps.
“Hurry… run… avenge me…”
The middle-aged man’s body was like a bellows with a hole punched through it.
Even speaking left him weak and breathless.
He could only shake his hoarse, broken-gong voice rapidly in the wind as he used his last ounce of strength to throw out a transmission token.
Unfortunately, he lacked the power, and it only landed three chi away from Chi Yujun on the ground.
Chi Chuxiong used the only Flash of his life.
Even with a fatal piercing wound already through his chest, he barely managed to block a sword strike for Chi Yujun.
Chi Yujun had never seen such a ferocious expression on his father’s face.
Those eyes, like the insects and food that died beside the medicine-washing pool, gradually lost focus and grew vacant.
Within that ferocity was a trace of miserable resolve mixed with an incomparably excited, joyful smile, as if what he was about to greet was not an insect-like annihilation, but a pilgrimage toward a bright new life.
The father who had still been sternly teaching him cultivation an hour ago now only had incoming breath and no outgoing breath.
Grief welled up in Chi Yujun unbidden, and his eyes went blank.
The impact of the scene was so great that he felt as if he were in a dream.
“Father—!”
“Hm? He’s still not dead?”
A handsome man in a pure white Daoist robe, immortal sleeves fluttering, with sword-like brows and starry eyes, wore a face full of confusion.
He had originally thought that after his Cold Moon Sword pierced a vital point, Chi Chuxiong would no longer have any ability to move.
He could not understand what power was still supporting the sect master of the Immortal King Sect until now.
And that voice, as warm as a spring breeze and as gentle as jade, exploded beside Chi Yujun’s ear, startling him so badly that goosebumps erupted all over his body and filling him with extreme terror.
He knew who this man was.
The so-called senior brother of the famous orthodox immortal sect, Dust Sword Palace: Fang Guyuan!
Although in Chi Yujun’s eyes, Fang Guyuan was no different from the insects he usually dealt with—nothing more than feed for the pets after the skin was peeled away.
But at this moment, Chi Yujun could not defeat him.
Chi Yujun considered himself a genius among those of the same age and Sequence.
Reaching Sequence 7 at nineteen was already quite remarkable.
He had no idea what spirit pills that damned Fang Guyuan had eaten.
They were similar in age, yet Fang Guyuan’s entire body already radiated the vast aura of Sequence 5, the Feather Transformation Realm.
His father’s aura was already growing faint.
The older sister who had doted on him most in daily life had long since collapsed in a pool of blood.
Chi Yujun knew that if he did not run now, he too would die here, his blood splattering on the spot.
He had to live! He had to live!
He had to live, and then avenge his father and sister!
He forced his somewhat weak legs to move, his body trembling.
He dared not look at Fang Guyuan again and sprinted desperately toward the spot where his father had thrown the transmission token.
His heart pounded and swelled wildly in his thin chest.
The cruel, piercing howl of the winter wind rushed past his ears.
“Heh, trying to run?”
After the surprise passed, Fang Guyuan’s sword-like brows sharpened.
He formed a seal with one hand, his gaze like ink.
The Cold Moon Sword that had just pierced Chi Yujun’s father’s body immediately flew out.
It traced a sword flourish in the air and, carrying a soaring sword intent as silver as the moon and as frosty as frost, shot straight toward Chi Yujun.
Chi Yujun’s mind stirred.
His cyan sleeve swept out, scattering countless spirit insects whose wings beat.
In an instant, a buzzing filled the heavens and earth.
[Phantom Spirit Gu]!
He knew that today’s immortal sect disciples had come prepared and must have brought quite a few artifacts and spirit tools to counter gu poison.
They had probably already taken some antidotes beforehand.
Even his father’s high-level gu arts had been ineffective against Fang Guyuan.
For Chi Yujun’s insect gu to stop Fang Guyuan was simply a pipe dream.
But this Phantom Spirit Gu was different from ordinary gu poison.
It itself had no toxin.
Only the phosphorus powder scattered from its wings would cause those who inhaled it to experience exciting hallucinations.
Only when too much phosphorus powder was inhaled would it cause death from overexcitement.
Facing such a huge gap in strength, Chi Yujun did not seek to injure the enemy.
He only hoped to buy a little time to obstruct that thief Fang Guyuan’s vision so he would have a chance to grab the life-saving token his father had thrown him.
Clearly this kind of attack was outside Fang Guyuan’s expectations.
The spiritual sense controlling that bone-chilling Cold Moon Sword weakened slightly, as if it had been interfered with.
Chi Yujun broke into a mad sprint, terrified that the next second would see his body perish and his dao vanish.
He used this opportunity to rapidly approach the token and snatch the transmission token into his hand.
The instant it entered his grasp, he poured every last bit of power in his body into the token with all his might.
He did not even have the time or energy to glance at the face of his father’s killer.
One extra second of delay and he might die here.
Spiritual light blazed on the token.
Just as he was about to escape with his life, before Chi Yujun could even feel a moment of extra joy, silver-white sword brilliance transformed into a shocking bolt of silk that stabbed straight at his brow.
Fortunately, the token activated.
Azure spiritual light enveloped Chi Yujun’s body and, in the blink of an eye, carried him away from this home of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
When he opened his eyes again, Chi Yujun felt slightly dizzy.
He staggered and swayed for a moment before beginning to identify his surroundings.
The cave was pitch-black.
The faint dripping of water from the stone walls inside the cave sounded intermittently with a ding-dong in some puddle.
A pair of ancient stone table and stone stools, a bookshelf of sect secret manuals, a small and exquisite bronze incense burner.
Tightly gripping the token his father had left him as his last gift, Chi Yujun took a deep breath and took out a small jade-porcelain bottle covered in ghastly blood-red patterns from the Xuanfang storage ring.
This was the Witch Elixir.
As long as one drank it willingly, one could obtain the power of a witch.
For the sake of revenge, he had to raise his strength as quickly as possible.
Even if he had been unwilling before because of possible side effects, he no longer had a choice.
For him at this moment, revenge was more important than anything.
He lit the calming incense in the burner, steadied his mind, pulled out the stopper of the porcelain bottle, and drank the potion inside in one gulp.
Crack!
The porcelain bottle slipped from his hand and shattered upon hitting the ground.
Chi Yujun’s eyes widened.
Overwhelming fragments of consciousness and information, like a roaring tsunami ten thousand zhang high, slammed toward his mind, then violently overturned and tore apart all of his consciousness, trampling his spirit underfoot as if stomping on a loser’s dignity.
A strange, ethereal voice echoed in his mind, letting out a wild, triumphant laugh.
The language was obscure and difficult to understand, as if cruelly mocking him while subtly transforming his body and consciousness.
But he did not resist, did not struggle.
He only endured with all his might, eyes nearly splitting, suppressing his instinct to reject the invader, and painfully accepted it all.
He accepted being a witch… completely.
Chi Yujun fell into a deep coma and collapsed to the ground.
What he did not see was that his originally male body, under the fierce medicinal power, was gradually transforming into the appearance of a young, mature woman.
Outside the cave, the wind and snow did not cease.
Inside the cave, a color like snow, like solitude itself, crawled across her beautiful hair.